Dear Abby: Jealousy, misunderstanding chip away at relationship

A couple constantly fights, and they don't know how to improve their relationship.

A couple constantly fights, and they don't know how to improve their relationship.

Photo: Mixmike, Getty Images

Photo: Mixmike, Getty Images

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A couple constantly fights, and they don't know how to improve their relationship.

A couple constantly fights, and they don't know how to improve their relationship.

Photo: Mixmike, Getty Images

Dear Abby: Jealousy, misunderstanding chip away at relationship

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Dear Abby: My boyfriend and I love each other very much. But we are both so jealous we fight every day. The only time we get along is during sex and right after. Recently, he found an email I had written when we first got together in reply to a message I had received about becoming an escort. I didn’t follow through with it, and I have never cheated. I was broke at the time, and he had just been sent back to prison. I didn’t know what to do.

How can I earn his trust and keep our relationship from becoming toxic?

Trying to Make It Work

Dear Trying: If the only time you and your boyfriend get along is during sex or right after, your relationship is already toxic. Rather than fight and accuse each other of infidelity every day, couples in healthy relationships build each other up and support one another. Total honesty between partners is essential. If he can’t believe what you tell him, there can be no love, because there is no trust.

Dear Abby: I am a 13-year-old girl, and I hate my family. I have had an eating disorder for three years, and my parents haven’t noticed. (It doesn’t show because I’m regular-size.) I think my parents hate me. They try to stuff me into a mannequin shell that doesn’t fit. It’s like I am a doll and not a person.

I don’t know what to do, and I am suicidal. But when I think about all the ambitions I have, I’m able to withstand another day, even though it is hard. Please help me.

Depressed Teen in Washington

More Advice

Dear Teen: Because you feel your parents may not take you seriously, be brave and tell a trusted teacher or counselor at school everything you have written to me, including your thoughts of suicide. Eating disorders can be very serious, and they are not always obvious. Because your feelings of depression are so strong that you sometimes feel you can’t go on, you need more help than an advice columnist can give you in a letter. Please don’t wait, and please let me hear from you again.

Dear Abby: When did it become someone’s right to walk into a business with a pet?

People walk in and never ask. Some of those animals hike their leg, and their owners giggle and never offer an apology or to clean it up. Dogs have jumped up on other customers while their owners stood there and said, “Don’t worry. He won’t bite.” The last customer came in with a full-grown German shepherd! I’ve gone through training on service animals, and these are definitely not service animals.

What happened to common courtesies?

Taken Aback in Oklahoma

Dear Taken Aback: The demise of common courtesies happened right around the time when people began believing they were the exception to the rules. When Americans with Disabilities Act legislation was passed, it was so that people with needs would have access to things that able-bodied people take for granted.

What you are experiencing is an abuse of that law by dishonest, uncaring individuals who have no sense of shame.